On July 18, 2017, a woman who had been recommended to Wyoming’s rehabilitative boot camp program filed this putative class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming. The case was assigned to Judge Scott W. Skavdahl. The plaintiff sued the Wyoming Department of Corrections (“WDOC”) and the Wyoming Women’s Center under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Under Wyoming’s Youthful Offender Act, all persons under twenty-five years old who were serving a prison sentence for any offense other than a felony punishable by death or life imprisonment were eligible to participate in a boot camp program through which they could gain new skills and shave time off of their sentences. However, the boot camp facilities in Wyoming were only open to men. As a woman, the plaintiff could not attend them. The plaintiff alleged that this violated her equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Represented by the ACLU and private counsel, she sought declaratory and injunctive relief.
On August 12, 2017, the plaintiff moved for class certification. The putative class would consist of all present and future female prisoners under the age of twenty-five and in the custody of the WDOC and/or the Wyoming Women’s Center who are or will be otherwise eligible to participate in Wyoming’s boot camp program, but who have been or will be denied participation due to their gender or not considered by WDOC due to their gender.
On August 29, 2017, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss, alleging that the plaintiff lacked standing to bring suit because the defendants had sent her to a comparable boot camp program in Florida. The plaintiff argued that the boot camp program in Florida was not comparable. On October 3, 2017, the plaintiff moved for a preliminary injunction, seeking to be placed in a Wyoming program of the same quality as that of the men’s program. She sought the same for all of the incarcerated women eligible for boot camp under the Youthful Offender Act.
On October 19, 2017, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint that contained new allegations regarding the Florida program. She alleged that her trip to Florida was long and traumatic and that the Florida program was inferior to the Wyoming program. On November 2, 2017, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint.
On November 9, 2017, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that that the plaintiff’s equal protection claims were not strong enough to meet the heightened scrutiny needed for a preliminary injunction. Four days later, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for class certification as well, holding that there were too few women in the Wyoming Women’s Center who were eligible for the boot camp program for class certification to be appropriate.
On January 3, 2018, the court denied the defendants’ November 2017 motion to dismiss, holding that the adequacy of the Florida program was an issue of material fact to be addressed at trial. By this point, however, the plaintiff was nearly finished with the Florida boot camp program, and she would be ineligible to attend another. So, the week prior to the court’s denial, on December 28, 2017, the defendants filed another motion to dismiss alleging mootness.
On January 18, 2018, the plaintiff completed the Florida boot camp program and was subsequently recommended for probation rather than prison time. She sought leave to file an amended complaint in light of this development, but the defendants opposed it, arguing that her case was now moot because she had completed a boot camp program and received a reduced sentence as a result. The court agreed with the defendants. On February 20, 2017, the court granted the defendants’ December 2017 motion to dismiss. The next day, the court entered judgment in favor of the defendants.
On March 8, 2018, the plaintiff appealed the court’s judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. As of June 2018, the case is ongoing there. The plaintiff has requested an oral argument, but no date has been set yet.
Rebecca Strauss - 06/08/2018
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